Part 5 (1/2)
All the elemental, primary facts of life are faith's discoveries; we have no other means of finding them. By faith we discover our _selves_. We do not hold back from living until we can prove that we exist. We never can strictly prove that we exist. The very self that we are trying to demonstrate would have to be used in the demonstration. We have no other way of getting at ourselves except to take ourselves for granted--accepting
”This main miracle that you are you, With power on your own act and on the world.”
As Mr. Chesterton remarked, ”You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves.” By faith all men go out to live as though their selves were real.
By faith we accept the existence of the _outer world_. We do not restrain ourselves from acting as though the physical world were really there, until we can prove it. We never can strictly prove it; perhaps it is not there at all. When through a microscope an Indian was shown germs in the Ganges' water, to convince him of the peril of its use, he broke the instrument with his cane, as though when the microscope was gone, the facts had vanished too. In his philosophy all that we see is illusion. Perhaps this is true--the world a phantasm and our minds fooling us. But none of us believes it. And we do not believe it because we live by faith--the elemental faith on which all common sense and science rest and without which man's thought and work would halt--that our senses and our minds tell us the truth. ”It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. _Reason itself is a matter of faith._ It is an act of faith to a.s.sert that one's thoughts have any relation to reality at all.”
By faith we even discover the _universe_. We cannot think of the world as a multiverse; we always think of it as having unity, and we do so whether as scientists we talk about the uniformity of nature, or as Christians we speak of one Creator. Not only, however, can no one demonstrate that this is a universe; _it positively does not look as though it were_. Opposing powers snarl at each other and clash in a disorder that gives to the casual observer not the slightest intimation that any unity is there. Thunder storms and little babies, volcanoes and Easter lilies, immeasurable nebulae in the heavens and people getting married on the earth--what indescribable contrasts and confusions! Still we insist on thinking unity into this seeming anomaly, and out of it we wrest scientific doctrines about the uniformity of law. As Professor James, of Harvard, put it, ”The principle of uniformity in nature has to be _sought_ under and in spite of the most rebellious appearances; and our conviction of its truth is far more like religious faith than like a.s.sent to a demonstration.”
One might suppose that beliefs so a.s.sumed and so incapable of adequate demonstration would make the knowledge based upon them insecure. _But the fact is that all our surest knowledge is thus based on a.s.sumptions that we cannot prove._ ”As for the strong conviction,” Huxley says, ”that the cosmic order is rational, and the faith that throughout all duration, unbroken order has reigned in the universe, I not only accept it, but I am disposed to think it the most important of all truths.” Faith then, in Huxley's thought, is not a makes.h.i.+ft when knowledge fails. Rather by faith we continually are getting at the most important realities with which we deal. As Prof. Ladd, of Yale, impatiently exclaims: ”The rankest agnostic is shot through and through with all the same fundamental intellectual beliefs, all the same unescapable rational faiths, about the reality of the self and about the validity of its knowledge. You cannot save science and destroy all faith. You cannot sit on the limb of the tree while you tear it up by the roots.”
V
If faith is thus the pioneer that leads us to knowledge of persons and of moral possibilities; if by faith we discover our selves, the outer world's existence and its unity, why should we be surprised that faith is our road to G.o.d? Superficial deniers of religion not infrequently seek the discredit of a Christian's trust by saying that G.o.d is only a matter of faith. To which the Christian confidently may answer: Of course G.o.d is a matter of faith. Faith is always the Great Discoverer.
A man finds G.o.d as he finds an earthly friend. He does not go apart in academic solitude to consider the logical rationality of friends.h.i.+p, until, intellectually convinced, he coolly arms himself with a Q. E.
D. and goes out to hunt a comrade. Friends.h.i.+p is never an adventure of logic; it is an adventure of life. It is arrived at by what Emerson called the ”untaught sallies of the spirit.” We fall in love, it may be with precipitant emotion; our instincts and our wills are first engaged; the whole personality rises up in hunger to claim the affection that it needs and without which life seems unsupportable; faith, hope, and love engage in a glorious venture, where logic plays a minor part. But to make friends.h.i.+p rational, to give it poise, to trace its origins and laws, to clarify, chasten, and direct--this is the necessary work of thought. Faith discovers and reveals; reason furnishes criticism, confirmation, and discipline.
So men find G.o.d. They are hungry for him not in intellect alone, but with all their powers. They feel with Tolstoi: ”I remembered that I only _lived_ at those times when I believed in G.o.d.” They need him to put sense and worth and hope into life. As with the reality of persons, the validity of knowledge, the unity of the world, so in religion the whole man rises up to claim the truth without which life is barren, meaningless. His best convictions at the first are all of them insights of the spirit, affirmations of the _man_. But behind, around and through them all play clarifying thoughts, and reasons come to discipline and to confirm. But the reasons by themselves could not have found G.o.d. Faith is the Great Discoverer.
”Oh! world, thou choosest not the better part, It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes; But it is wisdom to believe the heart.
Columbus found a world and had no chart Save one that Faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.
Our knowledge is a torch of smoky pine That lights the pathway but one step ahead Across the void of mystery and dread.
Bid then the tender light of Faith to s.h.i.+ne By which alone the mortal heart is led Into the thinking of the thought Divine.”[1]
[1] Professor Santayana, of Harvard.
CHAPTER III
Faith in the Personal G.o.d
DAILY READINGS
We are to consider this week the Christian faith that G.o.d is personal.
Before, however, we deal with the arguments which may confirm our confidence in such a faith, or even with the explanations that may clarify our conception of its meaning, let us, in the daily readings, consider _some of the familiar att.i.tudes in every normal human life, that require G.o.d's personality for their fulfilment_. Men have believed in a personal G.o.d because their own nature demanded it.
Third Week, First Day
Men have believed in a personal G.o.d because of a _deep desire to think of creation as friendly_. F. W. Myers, when asked what question he would put to the Sphinx, if he were given only one chance, replied that he would ask, ”Is the universe friendly?” Some have tried to think of creation as an enemy which we must fight, as though in Greenland we strove to make verdure grow, although the soil and climate were antagonistic. Some have tried to think creation neutral, an impersonal system of laws and forces, which we must impose our will upon as best we can, although in the end the system is sure to outlast all our efforts and to bring our gains to naught. But at the heart of man is an irresistible desire to think creation a friend, with whose good purposes our wills can be aligned, and whose power can carry our efforts to victorious ends. Says Gilbert Murray, of Oxford University, ”As I see philosophy after philosophy falling into this unproven belief in the Friend behind phenomena, as I find that I myself cannot, except for a moment and by an effort, refrain from making the same a.s.sumption, it seems to me that perhaps here too we are under the spell of a very old ineradicable instinct.” _But friends are always persons, and if creation is friendly then G.o.d is in some sense personal._ This faith is the radiant center of the Gospel.
=But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee. And in praying use not vain repet.i.tions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if ye forgive men their trespa.s.ses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.--Matt. 6:6-14.=
_O Lord, we would rest in Thee, for in Thee alone is true rest to be found. We would forget our disappointed hopes, our fruitless efforts, our trivial aims, and lean on Thee, our Comfort and our Strength.
When the order of this world bears cruelly upon us; when Nature seems to us an awful machine, grinding out life and death, without a reason or a purpose; when our hopes perish in the grave where we lay to rest our loved dead: O what can we do but turn to Thee, whose law underlieth all, and whose love, we trust, is the end of all? Thou fillest all things with Thy presence, and dost press close to our souls. Still every pa.s.sion, rebuke every doubt, strengthen every element of good within us, that nothing may hinder the outflow of Thy life and power. In Thee, let the weak be full of might, and let the strong renew their strength. In Thee, let the tempted find succor, the sorrowing consolation, and the lonely and the neglected their Supreme Friend, their faithful Companion._
_O Lord, we are weary of our old, barren selves. Separate us from our spiritual past, and quicken within us the seeds of a new future.